An Offer They Won’t Refuse

On December 6, 2005, a group of law schools, professors and students asked the Supreme Court to strike down the Solomon Amendment, a federal law that conditions funding for universities on the requirement that the universities afford military recruiters the same access to students that they grant other employers. This group told the Court that enabling military recruiters to interview students for careers in the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps in law school facilities is unconstitutional because the Amendment thereby compels the law schools to endorse “the military’s... explicit policy” of discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. Not only are the law schools and other complainants wrong on the law and the facts, but their attack on equal access to campuses for JAG recruiters, if successful, would help perpetuate one of the worst legacies of the Vietnam War: The divide between the American academy and the American military....